


Nothing Is Ever Lost

by elrhiarhodan



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Butterflies, Friendship, Grief, Hartwin, Longing, M/M, Not KTGC Compliant, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 00:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12642156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: After V-Day, Eggsy inherits Harry's code name and his house.  But there is something missing, and Eggsy will have no peace until it's found.





	Nothing Is Ever Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Posheggsy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Posheggsy).



> Written for [](http://posheggsy.tumblr.com)[](http://posheggsy.tumblr.com)**posheggsy** 's prompt for the Obscure Emotions meme: **Vellichor** :  _The strange wistfulness of used bookshops_ , and Hartwin, please.
> 
> I'm sorry that this has taken so long to fill - I'd gotten distracted by the Mark & Taron China Vogue pictures and then the Bottom Harry fest, and then this endless head cold.
> 
> Not Beta'd/Not Brit-picked

Until Harry Hart died, Eggsy had never been the type of person who'd browsed through old bookstores. 

It isn't that Eggsy doesn't like to read (he does) or that he prefers e-books over dead-tree-books (the jury's still out on that one), it's just that he's never really been around old bookstores. The shops near the council estates in North London tend towards cheap and not-so-cheerful crap - stuff that you didn't need to buy, but kind of looked like the stuff you thought you wanted (at least until you got home and realized that it's just crap that you've bought), or chain stores selling knockoffs of what the posh celebs wear on the telly, or food that's mostly empty calories and no nutrition.

But moving into Harry's house in Mayfair, a handful of blocks from Savile Row, opens up a whole new world for Eggsy. It's not just the posh retail that litters the area, but the proximity to Charing Cross Road, where there are still dozens of used and antique bookshops. And yet, it's not the proximity to the neighborhood that makes Eggsy a frequent customer - it's something in Harry's house - _his house_ \- that sets Eggsy on a quest.

 _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ is one of those books that you hear about in school, something that's mentioned during some boring history lecture, or it's a punchline to a joke in an old movie. It's not a book that anyone ever reads, right? 

Except maybe Harry Hart.

And it turns out it's not just _one_ book, but six, on prominent display in Harry's library. 

Yes, the posh bastard had a library in his house, filled with hundreds of books - mostly first editions that are probably worth thousands of pounds each. Eggsy's afraid to touch any of them and had asked Merlin what he should do with him.

_"Ye could sell them. They're yours. Everything is yours, lad. That's what Harry wanted."_

They might be his, but Eggsy isn't doing anything to change the contents of Harry's house. _His_ house. He can't. The cases of butterflies that adorn the downstairs loo. Mr. Pickle. The ugly artwork on the staircase walls. Even Harry's front pages. Especially Harry's front pages - although Eggsy does take keen pride in adding a new cover to the far wall every time he saves the world.

So the books stay in the library and as Eggsy has time to learn about the house, he discovers that there's special climate controls for the library to keep the books in optimal condition. Eggsy still won't read them - they all seem far too precious. But he does dust, and that's when he discovers that although Harry has six volumes of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ , there are actually _seven_ \- Harry's missing volume three.

There a space between Volumes Two and Four, which means that Harry must have Volume Three somewhere, but Eggsy can't find it, and it's driving him nuts. He's even searched Harry's office (now _his_ office) at HQ, the library at HQ, and every other place he can think of, but the missing book is nowhere to be found. He asks Merlin about it, but all he gets is a look and a sigh. Percival _thinks_ he might have seen Harry reading a book once, about twenty years ago. None of the other knights have a clue.

He mentions it to Roxy - not that Eggsy thinks she'll have any advice for him - but he just needs to vent. "I can't walk into the room without thinking it's my fault that the book's missing. But it isn't. Am I crazy?"

"No more than usual, Eggs. But …" Roxy doesn't finish her sentence, much to Eggsy' concern.

"But what?"

"Maybe it's symptomatic of your relationship with Harry? The missing book is the physical equivalent of your unresolved argument? Maybe the missing book makes you upset because you're still angry that you never got to make things right with Harry?"

Eggsy stares at Roxy, and to his embarrassment, he starts to cry. He _never_ cries. At least he never cries about stuff that matters (Eggsy always cries at the end of _An Affair to Remember_ ). Roxy pulls him into her arms and he chokes back a sob, the rest of his tears falling silently.

The next morning, after downing three cups of exceedingly strong espresso to combat the crying-jag induced headache, Eggsy has an epiphany. If he can find the missing volume - and by "find" he means "replace" - maybe he can finally feel like he can move forward.

The thing is, finding an exact copy of a single volume out of a rare set is harder than finding a needle in a haystack. The booksellers on Charing Cross Road are kind, but doubtful; one after the other explaining that no one will break up a set and sell just the one volume. And worse, it turns out that Harry's set is a special, high-class limited edition posh wanker binding with even more special painted fore-edges - some posh thing that super-posh nineteenth century wankers did. And of course that means that it'll be nearly impossible to find.

But Eggsy is determined, and a determined Eggsy is a fearsome thing. He's taken to haunting not only the Charing Cross bookstores, but whenever he's got a little bit of downtime on a mission (it doesn't happen often, but it does happen), he'll go to every antiquarian bookshop he can find, no matter what city he's in.

And he's come to love those places. They have a strange sort of wistfulness about them, something that Eggsy had mentioned to Roxy (she doesn't actually encourage him in his quest, but she doesn't dissuade him, either). Her explanation is rather practical, that perhaps the wistfulness is as if the bookstores know that they only exist to please a certain type of person who's soon becoming extinct, and that their own extinction is inevitable.

But that's not quite it, although Eggsy keeps his opinion to himself. To him, these old bookstores - especially the ones that have an order and rational that exists only in the mind of the long-dead bibliophile who had first opened up shop sometime in the eighteenth century - don't really exist on the same plane of being that the modern world occupies. That when Eggsy browses their shelves in search of the missing volume, he's slipping into a different universe, one where the motes of dust swirling in the late afternoon sun are really fairies dancing, or that the person who opened that particular book yesterday had died during the Boer War.

 _Liminal spaces_ \- it's a term that Eggsy had seen used in some video game that Jamal had loved - that there are places that exist between realities. To him, that's what these old bookstores are; places that are portals between the worlds, and the wistfulness he feels is the realization that these portals are going to close when people finally stop looking for old books.

He wonders if Harry felt that way, too - if he saw that reality was slightly askew.

 _Probably not_. Eggsy doubts that Harry Hart had a particularly fanciful mind. Then he remembers the butterflies and the stuffed dog in the downstairs loo and rethinks that.

Eggsy might not find the missing Volume Three of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ that would complete Harry's set, but he does find other treasures, particularly antique editions of Adalgert Seitz' books on lepidopterology, _Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde_. Eggsy supposes that a true collector would shudder in horror at the scattershot approach he takes with his purchases - Volumes One, Three, Nine and Fourteen are English editions, Volumes Two, Five, Twelve and Thirteen are the French versions, and Three, Six, Seven Eight and Eleven are in German.

Eggsy actually reads them and learns the name of every example that's pinned in a shadowbox hanging on Harry's walls. 

Two years after Harry dies under an unforgiving Kentucky sun, two years after Eggsy refuses to shoot his dog, kills Chester King, kills Richmond Valentine, saves the world and becomes Galahad by a unanimous vote of the Round Table, Eggsy gets a call from Frank Doel at Marks & Co., telling him that he believes he's located a likely copy of the missing Volume Three. 

Exhausted and just back from a two-month recon mission in Tashkent, Eggsy drags himself down to 84, Charing Cross Road, and sure enough, it's a perfect replacement for the missing book. Holding it in white-cotton gloved hands, Eggsy can almost believe that it's the actually book - there's something about the wear pattern on the spine, the age-discoloration of the leather binding that looks too familiar to be coincidence.

"Where did you find it?"

Doel gives Eggsy a quick grin. "In a box lot from an old house sale in Derbyshire. I nearly passed it by, but something told me to look."

Eggsy puts the book down and stares at it in wonder. Could Harry have visited that house and taken this book with him, only to leave it behind? That's something he'll never know. 

He pays for it - just a hundred pounds, although he would have easily given ten times that - and hurries home. Like the master bedroom, Eggsy keeps the library door locked, although unlike the master bedroom, Eggsy does spend time in here.

He unwraps the parcel - Marks & Co. is exceedingly old fashioned and packages their books in brown paper and tied with string - and sets it in place, between Volume Two and Volume Four. 

Eggsy sighs. The book is a perfect match.

He doesn't feel relief, though. He can still hear Harry's bitter words, his own angry responses. But they're muted now - as if that exchange had happened to other people and Eggsy had been a distant witness, or it had been a scene from a movie he's watched when he'd been half-asleep.

But it's done and Eggsy has to move on. He knows that, but he just doesn't know how. So he turns off the light and locks the door behind him. Things might be better after he's had some sleep, preferably three days' worth.

Except that Eggsy's sleep is interrupted by an urgent call from Merlin early the next morning. Harry Hart is alive and he just walked into the shop on Savile Row.

__

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Savvy readers may recognize Marks & Co, Frank Doel and [84, Charing Cross Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/84,_Charing_Cross_Road).
> 
> [Painted fore-edges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fore-edge_painting) are something rather spectacular and pretty much the apex of 19th Century bookbinding. During the 18th and 19th century, books were often sold unbound and wealthy people would have their volumes specially bound - bespoke binding, to coin a term. 
> 
> [ Adalgert Seitz' (editor) books on lepidopterology, _Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalbert_Seitz) are considered some of the finest works on the subject. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr - [](http://elrhiarhodan.tumblr.com)[](http://elrhiarhodan.tumblr.com)**elrhiarhodan** \- Let's shout about Kingsman.


End file.
